C H A P T E R 8 – Silent Witness

Choose TWO of the following passages from Chapter 8 and describe the MOOD and TONE in each passage. Also, explain how this MOOD and TONE was created. I.e. Reference any word choice, language techniques used, or sentence structure chosen.

“Instead there was a slow ache inside, a growing sense of loss and sorrow. This is what it had all come down to – standing alone, amid the mountain debris thinking of the waste and the pity. I thought of saying a quiet farewell as I turned to leave, but in the end, didn’t. He had gone for good. The steady surge of the glacier would take him down to the valleys in the coming years, but by then he would have become a casual memory. Already, it seemed, I was beginning to forget him.”Page 124

Tone:The sentences are long and detailed but there are parts that are short and to the point. ‘He was gone for good’, like a statement of finality. He used the term ‘casual memory’ like its just that one thing you forgot to get from the shop. Simons forget-and-move-on attitude in this passage effects the readers opinion of him. Where he once seemed like a laid-back chill sort of guy, he is now portrayed as self-centred and selfish for forgetting his friend so easily and moving on with his life as it were before.

Mood: We get a dull feeling of giving up, moving on, and forgetting. All the adjectives used in this passage are morose and dismal. Words like ‘gone, waste, pity, loss, and sorrow.’ They all set the mood for the serious time that this is.

“It was a lonely place to rest. In the huge chaos of the moraines, I had sat down to rest at the one spot where I would be reminded. We and sat in the same spot six days earlier. All our keen excitement, and the healthy strong feel in our bodies, had become an empty memory.”Page 125